There have been numerous prior art attempts to commercialize bicycle baskets constructed so as to be mountable on opposite sides of a rear wheel of a bicycle. Examples of such prior attempts are disclosed, for example, in Meier U.S. Pat. No. 2,704,626; Glenny U.S. Pat. No. 2,890,819; and, Glenny U.S. Pat. No. 2,944,712. There have even been attempts to mount such bicycle baskets on opposite sides of a rear wheel of a bicycle and to support those baskets from, or as part of, the rear luggage rack of the bicycle. Such an arrangement is disclosed, for example, in Smith U.S. Pat. No. 3,552,611.
There have also been collapsible bicycle baskets designed and built so as to be mounted upon opposite sides of the rear wheels of a bicycle. Such a collapsible bicycle basket is disclosed, for example, in an advertisement by Marshall Products Company of San Diego, Calif. for its “Kóla” folding bike basket. This “Kóla” folding bike basket is intended to be mounted in pairs on opposite sides of a rear luggage rack of a bicycle.
All of the bicycle baskets described hereinabove as part of the prior art, though, suffer from their commercial marketability because of the difficulty of writing easily understood instructions for the mounting of these bicycle baskets as accessories to be sold separately from the bicycle.
The saleability of bicycle accessories is, in substantial part, a function of the ease of mounting the accessory upon the bicycle. If the mounting is difficult or the instructions are complex, many customers will decide against buying that particular accessory. It has therefore been an objective of this invention to provide a collapsible bicycle basket which may be easily mounted upon the bicycle without the need for any complex mounting instructions.
It has been another objective of this invention to provide a detachable collapsible bicycle basket which may be mounted upon the rear luggage rack of a bicycle without the need for any nuts or bolts or similar attachment devices for securing the basket to the bicycle.
Still another objective of this invention has been to provide such a bicycle basket which may be easily detachably mounted and removed from a bicycle such that when the bicycle is used without the need for any baskets, the baskets may be easily removed, collapsed and set aside for future re-attachment when the need for those baskets reoccurs.